The Digital to the Physical: Bringing Your Personal Brand to Life

Building your online presence is no easy task – first you undertake the soul-searching trip to the best of your skills and characteristics, then you have to carefully synthesize the outcome into a mind-blowing, knocking-all-socks-off pieces of texts, all while cautiously balancing between the creative and the appropriate. And still, if you fail to live what you preach, you will be dismissed as a fraud in a heartbeat. Harmonizing the image you present online with your offline persona is a crucial part of your personal branding – simply because we (still) live most of our lives offline.

Get Going and Stay Focused

After you have identified your objectives and the image you want to project, start moving towards it. Take charge of your personal brand and make sure you are operating with intent. If you find yourself feeling disengaged and unmotivated, it may be because you forgot to focus on the goal behind your pursuits. Why are you doing what you are doing? What do you want to achieve? Is doing what you are doing helping you achieve it? These checkpoints can help you stay focused and eliminate counterproductive behaviour. Learn to look for constructive feedback about how your actions are being interpreted and make adjustments when you see fit.

Stay Informed

No matter what the industry you work in, keep yourself informed about the latest development, news and trends. Attend fairs, conferences and seminars where you can not only educate yourself, but also meet other professionals (think networking!). This kind of interaction can help drive traffic to your online presence, making it stronger in return.

Publicly showing active interest in your field is also worth something, as long as you do not think that you can build your career on simply sitting through a bunch of events. Think critically about the information you receive and feel free to share your opinions with your colleagues or online. Who knows, you just might become the next thought leader in your area of expertise. And even if that will not be the case, at least you will know what youare talking about.

Like it or not, at your workplace you are on display and everything you do or say is making up your public brand: clothes you wear, the way you speak to the janitor, how you treat your peers and what kind of jokes you make (if any). Carefully consider the most impactful ways of being physically present for others in the way you want to be perceived. Most likely it will not be much different from what you are already doing, you only need to add a pinch of structure and intention to your personal brand to get you real world results.

Veronika Bacova